The Arnifour Affair Read Online Free Page B

shoulder. “That he’s not, but he can be a fount of medical bric-a-brac just the same.”
    I fought to keep from scowling at him as I caught Lady Arnifour glancing my way. What little knowledge I possess was learned by necessity during a regrettable tenure spent in the coarser areas of the city during my youth. It is not something I prefer to advertise, so I was relieved when Victor and his buckboard came rounding the corner of the house. Two minutes later the three of us were trundled onto the open seat of the wagon heading for the farthest reaches of the Arnifour estate.

CHAPTER 3
    O ur journey began in relative silence with only the occasional snort of the horse to interrupt the steady drone of our wheels as we rocked along the dirt ruts of the driveway, me watching the breadth of their property unfold while Colin appeared to be studying nothing in particular as he smoothly coaxed another crown between the fingers of his hand. The moment we turned off the path and started out across an open field, however, Colin turned to Victor and began peppering him with questions about the family history.
    â€œBarnaby Langhem was given this property and the title of Baron by King George the Third, himself,” he said with evident pride. “Lord Langhem was Lady Arnifour’s great-grandfather and was one of the men responsible for keepin’ that poor man on the throne until long after he shoulda been removed.” He snickered. “Not six months later the King had a violent fit and accidentally throttled Lord Langhem, which meant that the land, but not the title, was passed on to his eldest son, Jacob. That’s when the great house was built—paid for by a royal decree under the circumstances. That’s when the whole Langhem family moved in and my family first began workin’ for them.
    â€œEverybody prospered under Jacob, but his life also came to a sudden end not more than ten years later. He either slipped in the mud stirred up by a downpour and was run over by a funeral carriage making haste to a plot before it was turned into a quagmire, or the carriage cut a corner too close and ran him down. Whichever the case, the outcome was the same.
    â€œThat left the estate and all its lands to Jacob’s eldest son, Alanon.” He heaved a weary sigh and I knew the story was becoming personal. “Alanon liked women and drink, and spent more time going through the Langhem fortune than addin’ to it. He and his wife only had one child—a daughter, the future Lady Arnifour herself.”
    â€œWhat about bastards?” Colin muttered.
    Victor shrugged. “None that I ever heard about.”
    â€œAnd what happened to him?” I asked before Colin could toss out another indelicacy.
    â€œUnfortunately, he lived into his eightieth year before he finally took a tumble out an upper-story window into the garden below. Destroyed the family’s prize roses, not to mention the damage he’d done to the Langhem name and fortune. A real pity.”
    â€œAnd as his only surviving heir,” Colin interrupted, “Lady Arnifour inherited the estate, such as it is.”
    â€œThat’s right.”
    â€œMust have been a shock to the Earl to discover he’d married into a family almost as penniless as his own.”
    Victor glanced at Colin and shrugged self-consciously. “I wouldn’t know about that,” he said, but his manner suggested otherwise.
    A moment later we skirted around a stand of trees and caught our first glimpse of the charred remains of a small building a short distance off. “The barn . . . ,” Colin muttered as he flipped the coin into his vest pocket and stared at the approaching destruction. It was impossible to notice anything else beyond the hulking blackened wreck, its remains baking in the sun like some great sea creature’s carcass that had managed to wash up on this waterless terrain. Only the stinging residue of